Previous studies reported that FM is related to the BMD of the lumbar spine and proximal femur (20, 21). Besides, other studies showed that BMR is more closely related to BMD than FFM, FM, and BMI (18, 22, 23). Our results were echoed to these studies and revealed that BMR could be effective to predict osteoporosis (BMD T-score< -2.5) with the optimal cut-off value 1187.5 kcal (Table 3 and Figure 2) in women over 50-old-year. If their BMR was lower than the cut-off values 1187.5 kcal, they might have a high risk of osteoporosis.
As mentioned above, higher FM went along with higher BMD as an effective predator for osteoporosis but some studies showed that FM was not effective for osteoporosis prediction in middle-aged and elderly people in Asia (24, 25) and the increased central body FM was negatively associated with BMD (26). Moreover, Saarelainen and his colleagues reported that trunk FM is positively related to lumbar spine BMD, but not to the hip BMD and body weight in postmenopausal women (21). Kirchengast and his colleagues found out that the relationship between FM and BMD only occurred in elder women (27). These studies showed that the FM for osteoporosis prediction might be restricted by ethnicity, gender, the region of FM, etc. However, FFM has a stronger positive relation with BMD at all ages in Chinese men and women (28) and our results (Table 3) also showed that the AUC of FFM (0.700) was higher than FM (0.602), suggesting that FFM seems to be better than FM for osteoporosis prediction. However, BMD is influenced by multiple factors such as genetic factors, gender, diet physical activity, medical diseases, stress, etc. (5, 29). It seemed the BMR is not the sole determine factor for osteoporosis that the correlation coefficient between all body composition variable and BMD T-score was <0.4. However, it did provide a window for screening osteoporosis through convenient and non-invasive methodology.
BMR, the amount of energy expended, is predicted with regarding to resting energy expenditure. In multivariate analysis, BMR was low correlated with FM (Correlation coefficient:0.281) (Table2), suggesting that BMR and FM might be independent predictors of osteoporosis. However, BMR is more closely associated with BMD in elderly persons than BMI, FM, and FFM (18, 22, 23). BMR is positively associated with muscle strength (30) while muscle strength and BMD also are correlated (31, 32). Our results also showed that the AUC of BMR is higher than FFM, and FM, suggesting that BMR might be a good predictor for osteoporosis. According to our results, we proposed that if the postmenopausal woman’s BMR is lower than the cut-off value,1187.5 kcal, the subject might have higher osteoporosis risk than others whose over 1187.5 kcal. Although hip and spine fractures are a portion of osteoporotic fractures, these fractures have a huge impact on the patient's daily activity and medical burden (33, 34). Low BMD is associated with an increased risk of fracture and hence provided an measurable method in osteoporotic fractures preventions. However, it is disadvantage by radiation exposure and limited accessibility. Since BMR could well predict BMD in the present study, it seemed a good method in screening osteoporosis. Besides, the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) proposes that increasing physical exercise can maintain and improve bone quality in response to bone health problems (35). Here, we provided the cut-off value of 1187.5 kcal of BMR. It could serve as a target value for exercise intervention to enhance BMR in postmenopausal women to maintain and improve their BMD.
Several limitations of the present study should be acknowledged. First, the subjects of this study are postmenopausal women aged over 50 years old. Men and those under 50 years old are not included. Therefore, the relevant threshold only applies to postmenopausal women aged over 50 years old. Second, because the subjects were from southern Taiwan, the present cut-off value was restricted to Asians. It was shown that the body compositions were not identical between Caucasian and Asian populations. (36-38). In fact, Asian populations had more fat mass percentage and central fat. Therefore, extrapolating the findings in the present study to Caucasian populations warranted further investigations. Nevertheless, the effect of the exercise on the BMD has no difference in different races so we proposed that the BMR could be a predictor for BMD in different races via slightly adjusting the cut-off value of BMR.
Implications for Practice